Magic, Memory Make Towers Immortal
The Man Who Walked Between The Towers by Mordicai Gerstein
I found myself explaining the events of 9/11 to my six-year-old son today.
We had taken a walk down to our local library where we each picked out a handful of picture books and brought them home. I then let him select two books to read aloud as bedtime stories. The second one he picked was called The Man Who Walked Between the Towers. Right before leaving the room, my husband looked at the title and said, "Oh, it's based on a true story." I shrugged my shoulders and proceeded to read the first book.
You'd think the cover would have been a warning. It showed a cable attached to a tall building over looking a harbor. Had that not been a clue, perhaps the title should have been. But I was still caught by surprise and had my breath taken away by the opening sentence of the book.
Once there were two towers side by side.
The past tense and the fairy tale opening felt like a punch in the gut. I paused, unable to continue for a moment. I glanced over at the disclaimer page opposite and saw it had a copyright date of 2003. Yes, the towers were firmly past tense. I read on.
The book told the story of Philippe Petit, the man who strung a cable between the two buildings that had not yet opened to the public. He strung the cable between them and then walked and danced on that wire for an hour as the sun rose over New York City. Afterward he was arrested and the judge sentenced him to perform for children in the parks of New York.
Although I had a vague memory of once hearing that someone had walked on a tightrope between the Twin Towers, it wasn't a story that had stuck with me. And never had I heard it told with the lyrical force that Mordicai Gerstein did in The Man Who Walked Between The Towers. Had the story been fiction it could not have had a more magical or entertaining quality to it. We understood Philippe's dreams and were awed by the power of the towers and the walk that he made.
Supporting his tightly told tale were incredible ink and oil paintings. The paintings set the story in 1974, both with its colors and the fashions of the pedestrians. More than that, the pictures allowed the words to understate the incredible feat the French aerialist performed. The words could be mild because the pictures frequently took my breath away and gave me a feeling of vertigo. I gasped when I saw him lying on the tightrope and my hand instinctively covered the page because I wanted to shield my son from the sight of a man plummeting from the top of the towers. After a few seconds, I realized such tragedies were still almost 30 years away from the events of this book and I pulled my hand back and continued reading.
For reasons I can't begin to explain, the pictures also made me understand Philippe's need to be up there doing what he was doing. At no point in the book did I think of him as a publicity hound or a P.T. Barnum. Gerstein convinced me of the artistry of his act and of the necessity of it. He convinced me that it is part of what should be remembered about the towers. Gerstein also includes two special fold-out pages in this book. One gives us a panoramic view of the city from Philippe's viewpoint as he stepped out the long distance between the towers on a cable less than an inch thick. The second gave us the feel of exactly how tall the buildings were from the viewpoint of a pedestrian on the street.
On the penultimate spread, there was but a single sentence that read:
Now the towers are gone.
I couldn't help myself. I closed the book and let the tears flow. My son looked at me and asked, "Why are they gone?"
"Some bad men flew planes into them. They exploded and the towers collapsed."
"Do you just have to cry?"
"Yes." I answered.
"Do you remember it?" he asked.
I smiled a little and said, "Yes, I do remember it."
"Are you really old?" he asked.
I laughed then and told him it wasn't that long ago that it happened. That he was in school that day and we learned about it on our way to pick him up. He decided then that I needed a hug.
Feeling better, I completed the story, allowing Gerstein to tell us that the walk is part of what still exists in our memory of the tower and that it will live on, just one piece of the immortality of the Twin Towers.
